4 DECEMBER 15, 2001
Smoke Signals
IE K TOMD) TO
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Testifying Before Congress Grand Ronde Tribal members testified before Congressional Repre
sentatives in October of 1983, less than two months before the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde were
restored to federal recognition. Testifying in Washington, D.C. were Marvin Kimsey, Jackie Whisler, Frank Harrison,
Karen Askins (Harrison) and Kathryn Harrison.
ingly for the first few years, CTGR was an after-hours
project; work away from work, unpaid
and for even Kimsey himself, often questionable.
"I can't say what drives a person to do it," he
told me. "I don't know who else would have done
it, because there wasn't a whole lot of interest.
Work 10-12 hour days for nothing. Who wants
to do that?"
Well enough people wanted to do "that" to make
the venture worthwhile. The first few acres of
CTGR property were purchased, the cemetery no
less, but coming at least with an office building.
Things were cooking. Membership was estimated
at more than 600 people, and there was a steady
flow of volunteers to keep the ball rolling.
"A lot of people came and went," said Kimsey.
"Some were really helpful for one or two months
and then they left. And who can blame them?
They had their livelihood, their jobs."
Kimsey called the period of 1975 to 1979 a time
of "no gains whatsoever." But that time pro
duced the core group of himself, Jackie Whisler,
Merle Holmes, and Margaret Provost, the four
of who were to be instrumental in getting the
Tribe restored. And that time yielded some of
the long-lasting alliances, such as with Eliza
beth Furse and Don Wharton of Oregon Legal
Services, and with a strong political friend in
the form of Congressman Les AuCoin.
Two other key players of note would arrive on
the scene, Dean Mercier and Kathryn Harrison.
Kimsey and Whisler both can remember the long
days and nights spent crowded in the cemetery
office, with neither heat or plumbing, one phone
line and a donated typewriter between them.
Their first computer was a Commodore 64, which
only one person knew how to use. Paper towels
substituted for coffee filters.
"Yeah I can remember during the long winter
days, watching Jackie and Kathryn sit at their
desks, wearing their coats," chuckled Kimsey.
"Gosh I can remember those days too," Whisler
told me on another occasion. "I left a Coke sit
ting by my desk one night and when I came back
the next morning, it had frozen.
"We lived Restoration," she said.
Whisler entered the fray back in 1977, while
living in Amity. Her father, Dean Mercier had
become involved and phoned her one night ask
ing when she was going to come over and "start
helping her people."
Mercier himself had become involved, some
what inadvertently, after learning at a Christ
mas party one night that he'd been elected to
Tribal Council.
"I figured if they thought enough of me to vote
me in I'd better start paying attention," he said.
He, like others, had been recruited into the
effort by Kimsey, of course. "Mister Restoration,"
Mercier called him.
Holmes, Kimsey and Mercier were in fact three
of the first original Tribal Chairmen. A Tribal
Council did exist back then, with elections de
termined not by ballots, but merely by a show of
hands at the General Council meetings.
"Back then nobody wanted to be on council,"
Whisler said. "Sometimes I think if somebody
was angry at somebody else, they would nomi
nate them for council."
Perhaps nobody wanted to be on council be
cause the positions were, like virtually every
other one in those days, voluntary (read: un
paid). Council members had to be leaders, not
politicians, an aspect not forgotten by the pre
Restoration group, especially Mercier.
"I never turned into a politician," he said.
"Though sometimes they tried to force me to. It
was tough on the way to Restoration."
Indeed, Mercier's fiery personality didn't al
ways serve his purpose too well. Whisler and
her father both remember one of their early
meetings with Les AuCoin, when the Congress
man was unusually tardy.
"He asked us if he was late," Mercier remem
bered. "I said 'Oh, about two years late."
Whisler growled "Dad!" and gave him a sharp
kick in the shin for the lack of diplomacy.
"I can remember AuCoin just looked at my dad
and said: TTou're starting out wrong. She said,
laughing.
Nonetheless, a sense of levity pervaded many
of those early meetings. Some even look back
on the occasional fistfights that erupted within
the confines of Tribal functions with nostalgia,
because even an overheated argument that
came to blows was a sure sign of clear and effec
tive communication. Nobody doubted another's
stance after a bloody nose and row on the floor.
"The meetings were fun back then," said
Whisler. "They were informative."
Just what were they doing all those years?
What did all those meetings, all those long office
hours need? Kimsey gave me a paper from his
records, a questionnaire and on it written, among
other things: Congressional Criteria for Federal
Recognition.
It read:
1. The Tribe has exercised ongoing govern
mental functions.
2. Tribal group consists of a community of In
dians belonging to a formerly recognized Tribe.
3. The Indians are still located in their aborigi-
By Chris Mercier
here I sat at the local Food Bank.
Elder Marvin Kimsey sat before me,
leaning back in the chair, calmly
flicking cigarette ashes into a coffee
can. He spoke of Restoration. No,
not the act of Restoration, Bill 3885, and speak
ing before Congress. Not the recent celebration
at Spirit Mountain Casino. No, none of that.
He spoke of those first Tribal Council meetings
that were like potlucks and the occasional shout
ing match that unfurled in a tiny office at a cem
etery. To him, Restoration signified a unique
struggle that he and a handful of others worked
toward long ago.
He talked about Lebanon, nearly 30 years ago.
Margaret Provost convinced he and Merle
Holmes to come to a meeting held by some Asso
ciation of Urban Indians.
"God those meetings were awful, they fought,
they bickered," he told me. "Some of the people,
they were Kalapuyan, some of them were Sioux.
Some not even Indian at all."
We both chuckled at that last one.
"Some not even Indian at all."
But despite the arguing, those people had one
thing in common; an idea in hindsight that
meant everything, an idea that would put Grand
Ronde on the map. The year was 1972, and the
Termination Act had occurred not even 20 years
ago. The idea was Restoration. Nobody knew
what that meant, how long such a task would
take or even if the goal was at all possible. But
the idea stuck and thirty years later viola, Con
federated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
If it could have only been that simple.
"You know, we figured it would take two or
three years, tops," said Kimsey.
Well, we all know how the road toward Resto
ration extended a little beyond that projection,
as the Tribe never really became The Tribe in
the eyes of the federal government until 1983,
eleven years after Kimsey, Provost, and Holmes
first attended that fateful little meeting in Leba
non. What we don't really know is just what
had to be done to achieve Restoration. Paper
work, loads and loads of paperwork. And phone
calls, and letters to be written, and surveys, and
enrollment numbers, and fact-finding, and
people finding, coalition building, you name it -this
was grass roots politics.
Names abound Les AuCoin, Elizabeth
Furse, Mark Hatfield, Don Wharton and Dean
Mercier. And yes, most people have a general
idea of what happened, what with the visits to
Washington,D.C. and all. But only a select few
know the whole story, one which really goes be
yond the scope of a simple article of a bi-monthly
publication, and might be better suited for a de
tailed account as a book. At least so said Kimsey.
"It is . . .impossible, I mean impossible to tell you
everything that went on in Restoration, and what
that entailed," Kimsey told me, shaking his head.
"It really is. You just had to be there.
"There were a lot of sacrifices made," he con
tinued. "We weren't always a Tribe with a ca
sino, or a Tribe with timber even."
To be exact they were a small group of people,
with lives, with jobs not really related to a po
tential Tribe. There was no steady source of
funding, no grants, and their pooled extra cash
amounted to no more than $37. Not surpris-